Thursday, November 22, 2007

Two great writers deaths that were trumped by dying on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated

Two great writers deaths that were trumped by dying on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated

Undoubtedly buried in the trauma and drama of the news that fateful day, November 22, 1963 two of the world's (imo) greatest writers left the earth.

Judging by their work... it's my guess they'd have been amused by the relative obscurity in which they departed and or became part of terra firma because what they left behind in a literary sense would last for eternity

"Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized. Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug. Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology. Stability was practically assured."

Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings. Both authors were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at about the age of 30, Lewis re-converted to Christianity, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England" (Lewis 1952, p. 6). His conversion had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Later in life he married the American writer Joy Gresham, who died of bone cancer four years later at the age of 45.

Lewis's works have been translated into more than 30 languages and sell more than a million copies a year. The books that comprise The Chronicles of Narnia have sold more than 100 million copies. Many stage and screen adaptations of Lewis's works have also been produced, the most notable of which is the 2005 Disneyfilm adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Sometimes you want a cloudy day

"When rain has wet the kite twine so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of your knuckle, and with this key a phial, or Leiden jar, maybe charged: and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all other electric experiments [may be] performed which are usually done by the help of a rubber glass globe or tube; and therefore the sameness of the electrical matter with that of lightening completely demonstrated."